And in a completely unrelated (read: COMPLETELY UNRELATED) storyline that happens to be COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the “main” storyline, a completely unrelated person fights with some other person for like 20 minutes. For some reason they’re in the same OVA though.

THE END.

Long… summary? Wait summaries shouldn’t be long wait what what what what why is this still bolded why am I still typing

So Black (insert star-thingy/asterisk here) Rock Shooter is fighting against Black Gold Saw who is NEVER EVER EVER

EVER EVER EVER

EVER EVER EVERER EVERER

EVERER EVERER EVEREST

SEEN EVER AGAIN.

After the epic battle scene that like takes a while, the main character, Kuroi MATO, reveals that she’s not a MATO but a toMATO because TO-MA-TOS are not PO-TA-TOs, and all fish swim underwater in the SEA

WHAT IS IT IS IT A GHOST IS IT A TSUNAMI IS IT A MOUNTAIN IS IT A BIRD IS IT A PLANE NO IT ISN’T BECAUSE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS

Mato (who shall now be referred to as TO-MATO) meets Takanashi YOMI, (who shall now be referred to as SHARK because she’s a loan shark; I mean seriously all she does every day is say “Hey, YOMI” which is SHARK-speak for “HEY YOU OWE ME” which is NORMAL-speak for “GIVE ME ALL YOUR MONEY BEFORE I CUT OFF YOUR HEAD WITH A DRIED SHAMPOO BOTTLE DAMMIT”)

Because this OVA is basically two stories at once (if you haven’t read the short summary which I strongly advise you against doing so as it contains MASSIVE SPOILERS), and the second story is sorta mindless (about B*RS walking through some toilet-paper-cliff-graveyard-church-place and fighting with Dead Master with an Okuu laz0r), I’ll skip the sections where the mindless story comes in. Granted, the primary story (Tomato doing random crap with Shark) is pretty mindless too but at least there’s something to say. I mean, would you really want to read a post that goes “And then, Black Rock Shooter walks through a graveyard/cliff (yes, walks through)/toilet stall while Dead Master watches from afar” every two sentences?

OPERATION SUCCESS ALL PUPILS HAVE BEEN FUSED INTO ONE BODY “PUPILS” IS NOW A STUDENT OF THIS SCHOOL

Shark steps out of a car because she gets so much money from people owing her and Tomato, who obviously also owes Shark because everyone owes Shark, even though Tomato’s never met Shark before, decides to BE FRIENDS WITH HER.

Fast-forward 20 minutes and Tomato’s made a new friend – Yuu, short for… er… you? Yuu, who shall now be known as You, who is reading this blog and currently feeling very very popular because this blog is mentioning You, but unfortunately you realize You is not you because You is Yuu. Which is grammatically correct because you are not Yuu and you are not You either, however You is Yuu and Yuu is You.

From left to right: You, Tomato, Yomi. You, tomato, you owe me! You owe me a tomato.

Anyways, in their second year of school (I also have to mention that Tomato’s little brother, Kuroi HITO, is the only male in the whole OVA, excluding random train people and that old photographer guy), Shark and Tomato are in different classes – Shark’s ALL ALONE and Tomato is with You. You must be so happy to be with Tomato, which gets even more confusing if you don’t know the difference between You and you because of capitalization of beginning of sentences. Argh English grammar

Flashback to that mindless battle scene place where there’s like battle scenes and toilets and stuff

And Black Rock Shooter (the girl with the Okuu cannon) defeats Dead Master (the other girl with the EVILLLLLLLLLL green eyes) by hugging her.

And then she falls off a cliff and dies :U

Black Rock Shooter also somehow manages to bring Shark back from the land of the wherever.

Cue credits.

Wait 240 seconds.

THE END.

So at the end… BLACK ROCK SHOOTER WAS A TOMATO

I’m not sure why I didn’t really love this. The animation was brilliantly executed, the art well-drawn, the music wonderful (with quite a bit of Black Rock Shooter references, although none quoted directly); then again, this is based on a music video, so obviously those three aspects would be awesome.

Maybe it was because of my GREAT EXPECTATIONS (epic book, by the way). All the hype surrounding this made me expect something much, much more – certainly not a slice of life about some random teenage girls. I didn’t have anything to base on but the video (which doesn’t really tell you anything), so I had no idea what to expect either. Maybe because I had no idea what to expect, thus my expectations were the highest – by expecting nothing, you expect everything, and nothing can beat everything.

Thus over-hyped = fails expectations.

That probably wasn’t it, because even so this OVA should’ve at least gotten a rating of Amazing.

What’s the one thing music videos don’t have, can’t have, will be unable to ever have?

Storylines. Narratives.

Plot.

As I said in my short summary, this entire 50-minute OVA can be wrapped up in one sentence, although what it is can vary. Be it “WHAT MIKU’S NOT IN IT THIS SHOW SUCKS LOLLOLOLOL”, “An intense, highly stylistic experimental anime film exploring the connections between two different worlds through not dialogue, but pure metaphorical analogies and one cross-dimensional visit near the end, blah blah blah blah blah… blah blah run-on sentence blah… this show sucked.”, or “The OAV is all about how petty and self-centered children can be.”

The only reason we can summarize this entire show in so many different sentences, is because there are so many different plotlines that there is no plot.

It’s experimental.

It’s so brilliantly written that most of us don’t realize it’s experimental.

I’m not sure how to start and my mind’s sorta dead right now, so if anyone gets confused/is interested I might expand on this. But I’m probably just really really tired to have come up with such a stupid idea.

First of all, as we all know, Black Rock Shooter is a metaphor for Shark’s jealousy and random crap, right? And we can safely say that BRS is Tomato, and Dead Master is Shark, right?

But what if it wasn’t?

What if they were completely, COMPLETELY different things? Even the final scene?

Black Rock Shooter isn’t a story about one girl and some weird metaphor about her.

It’s one story, about two different stories. Some guy just had to put them together.

Tomato was really sad and stuff at the end, and Shark was on her mind all the time. Now, we know that if you’re thinking of something, most likely you’ll dream of that thing. Tomato was on her bed when her cellphone “rang”.

You can now think that Tomato, while on her bed, somehow fell asleep and didn’t notice the bridge between real-life and dream-Inception-life-thing-what-Inceptionwasanawesomemoviebytheway. In her dream, the cellphone rang, and she rushed to some random place because that would totally help her find Shark, found some random thing and then BRS did random crap.

Then she woke up. She went to school, and Shark was there.

In reality, Shark was kidnapped or something and the police somehow freed her, but didn’t tell Tomato for some reason.

The Otherworld is something in a completely different plane – coincidentally, Tomato was just dreaming of BRS. How? We may never know and my brain’s melted. The Otherworld may also exist solely in Tomato’s mind – as the emotional conflicts were getting stronger, well… BRS was always fighting against DM so… I don’t know, it’s late, alright?

In the pure-BRS story, Black Rock Shooter and some girl (who looks a lot like Shark) had some kind of fight (haha). That girl got angry, and changed to an exterior personality (multiple personality disorder) – Dead Master. They fought for a while, and then Dead Master had an internal conflict – the girl tried to stop attacking, but Dead Master just got angrier. BRS then hugs Dead Master who reverts personalities.

Even without dialogue, you can understand the story. What’s more, unlike several anime that have dialogue, the story isn’t confusing, or something that you have to leave to guessing – it may not be multiple personality disorder, but the general feel is very, very obvious.

As for the last scene, BRS-PoV? After freeing girl-that-looks-like-Shark, BRS realized that she was actually an exterior personality herself. Because the only thing she knows how to do is hug random people and shoot giant laz0r beams, she decided to let her inner personality take over. Somehow, she imagined that her inner personality looked a lot like Tomato; and thus voila, end of anime.

After having two separate stories, the creators then use of motives to “connect” the two films – checkerboards, stars, music, eye colours, etc.

In this way, two distinctly separate films that you wouldn’t have even guessed were the same (if you took them apart and killed the last scene, without all the hype, of course), become one.

The whole film is just an experiment. An experiment to see if two separate films could be merged together with minimal interaction. Indeed, the only time in the whole film both worlds came together was in that minute-or-so near the end – just with that little bit of binding, the whole story came together.

Overall Rating: 5/10 (Great)

OR

Overall Rating: 9/10 (Godly)

YOU JEALOUS. AND YUU JEALOUS. BUT YOU IS YUU. IS JEALOUS.

post scriptum Notice how in this post my brain died, melted, and froze.

6 responses

Nice review on Barak rock shoota(That’s how BRS said it at the end of the OVA.)I am givin this review…mmmmm let’s see…5/10 score.The things drawn on the pictures by mushy ARE pretty nice and funny.Music is pretty nice too,since I have my music player on.But…there are some unclear things about this review.What mushy really is?Does he like mushed patatoes?How can there be a clone war with only 2 people?(Bad budget?)Yep…that’s my final score.

P.S.To tell you the truth I liked it mostly cuz BRS have a blue flaming eye. :D :D But mostly.Not entirely.

Now that you are BRS I wonder who’s gonna owe you…AND did you ask for premission to refer Silhouette project in this post!?!I am telling Shikieiki on you… :D :D :D
(Freakin corn danmakuuuuuu….I still remember it.Neva gonna touch TOHO 9 since I beated it…forever)